list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM
EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY LEVIATHAN (12A) 87min ●●●●● DRAMA JEUNE & JOLIE (18) 95min ●●●●●
ACTION HOMEFRONT (15) 100min ●●●●●
Anthropologists Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel have created a remarkable cinematic experience in Leviathan, a documentary shot in one night on a fishing trawler off the New England coast. In the same seas that inspired Moby Dick, these two filmmakers have utilised innovative techniques to create a visceral portrait of fishing. By attaching cameras on the ends of poles and extending them into the boat’s nooks and crannies, the filmmakers immerse the audience in the sounds and textures of the trawler, and in the process capture the most astonishing images. In one extended shot the bodies of limp, slippery fish pile up, bulging eyeballs staring deadly into the lens.
Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s images are frequently surprising, at times taking on an other- worldly quality that pushes the film into experimental territory. Yet there are interesting themes explored here too: our ambivalent connection to the ocean; the romanticism and adventure associated with being at sea; and both the beauty of the natural world and the contrasting grotesque elements of hunting. This is sublime, thought-provoking filmmaking. (Gail Tolley) ■ GFT, Glasgow, Fri 29 Nov–Thu 5 Dec. See Q&A, page 61.
Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour is an obvious reference point in François Ozon’s latest feature about a 17-year-old girl Isabelle (Marine Vacth) who, having lost her virginity on holiday, takes the not-so-very- logical step to become a prostitute. But this is not a satirical take on middle-class repressions, instead it’s a troubling examination of female adolescence.
Isabelle experiences her first sexual encounter as profoundly disembodying; she shuns emotional attachment and seemingly self-medicates with masturbation and pornography. As such, the film plays as a suitably distanced study of the disparity between emotional and physical attachment, intimating that the transition into adulthood and, by extension, a society constructed around various harmful dichotomies and expectations.
Ozon does not offer trite explanations for his
young protagonist’s destructive behaviour. However, his predilection for broad brushstrokes means he runs the risk of leaving this character a s a beautiful, feminine mystery. Elsewhere, as in Under the Sand, Ozon has demonstrated that he can produce nuanced studies of female psychology. Ultimately, this film signals towards complexity without probing its subject matter fully. (Anna Rogers) ■ Limited release from Fri 29 Nov.
Based on the novel by Chuck Logan and with a screenplay by Sylvester Stallone, Homefront is about an American hero hounded by hostile small- towners, in the manner of one of Stallone’s finest, First Blood. Except this time our hero, Phil Broker, isn’t even a little bit American – he’s played by the stubbornly British Jason Statham.
The bombastic opener sees DEA agent Broker involved in a bloody gun battle with a biker gang he has infiltrated. Fleeing the fallout, Broker and his daughter Mattie (Izabela Vidovic) relocate to rural Louisiana. When Mattie stands up to a local bully, the pair provoke the bully’s mother Cassie (an impressively ragged Kate Bosworth). Cassie calls upon her psychotic meth-manufacturer brother Gator (James Franco) and it’s not long before Broker’s old foes join the menacing throng. Statham shows his clout by attracting a knockout
supporting cast, which also includes Winona Ryder. Underneath, Homefront isn’t any more sophisticated than your average Statham vehicle, but if you like your movies daftly quotable and preposterously exciting, then Stallone and director Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) deliver. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 6 Dec.
DRAMA BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR (18) 180min ●●●●●
Billed as a French lesbian coming-of-age drama, Blue is the Warmest Colour has been mired in controversy since winning the Palme d’Or in Cannes (as much for an invective launched against the film’s director by both main actresses as for the frank depiction of sex between two women). None of which should detract from the fact that the film presents a landmark achievement in its subjective portrayal of the intricacies of female desire, due in no small part to the extraordinary courage and conviction of its two lead actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. Related across two chapters, Abdellatif Kechiche’s film takes
a full three hours to explore the minutiae of an adolescent girl’s rite of passage into adulthood, her first experience of a terrifyingly passionate and all-consuming love for another person and, finally, the affair’s demise. At the film’s opening, Adèle (Exarchopoulos) is a young girl thirsting for experience, but hemmed in by the strictures of her environment. By its close she has transitioned into a lonely and uncertain young woman who, in losing her first love, has also seemingly misplaced the coordinates with which she navigates the world.
While its narrative is not unusual, the specificity of the film lies in how it conveys the feelings of intense intimacy and heartache, the rawness of lust for another’s body and the inconsolable grief that results whe n that body is taken away. The true narrative of the film is enveloped in the body of Adèle and developed across and between the fleshy dialogue of lovers’ limbs. Fundamentally, this is a cinema of the body and, in order to match this, its sex scenes are appropriate in their visceral corporeality. This is exquisite, vital and very brave filmmaking. (Anna Rogers) ■ Limited release from Fri 22 Nov.
14 Nov–12 Dec 2013 THE LIST 59